It was Ezra Pound who steered a young James Laughlin into publishing. Pound and his wife were living in Italy during the 1930s, and Laughlin had come by train from Paris to live nearby. They discussed literature, walked in the hills, with Laughlin showing Pound his attempts at poetry for comment and criticism. As Laughlin described events in a 1980 interview, "after I had been there some months, he said to me, 'Jas, lets face it, you're never going to be a writer. Why don't you go back to the States and do something useful?' For Laughlin this meant publishing: "it was books and authors. Literary. It meant escaping from working in the family steel mill, which I hated" (Dana 1986).

Laughlin's friendship with Ezra Pound enabled him to publish works by Pound himself, as well as works by a number of Pound's friends. "What Ezra did to get me started was to write letters to all his writer friends - to [William Carlos] Williams, to Kay Boyle, to [Jean] Cocteau, to, oh, a dozen or so writer friends - saying, 'If you have a manuscript, send it to this worthy young man'" (Dana 1986). New Directions' list eventually included some of the most significant and influential writers of this century, writers such as Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, Dylan Thomas and William Carlos Williams. Because New Directions had long championed experimental writing, and because it had published several of the writers most admired by the Beats, the press came to seem one of the most desirable, and at the same time one of the most attainable, publishing outlets for them.

In 1952, when Allen Ginsberg had received some very encouraging comments from William Carlos Williams in response to some poems which Allen had sent him, New Directions was the first publisher that he thought of sending the manuscript to (Miles 1989):

Writing from the Hotel Weston in New York City, where he was taking a few days vacation, Williams wrote [Ginsberg]: "Wonderful! . . . How many of such poems as these do you own? you must have a book, I shall see that you get it. Don't throw anything away. These are it." Allen, deliriously happy, wrote immediately to Jack [Kerouac] and Neil [Cassady] in San Francisco. He enclosed copies of ten poems and said, "Now you realize you old beanpoles, the two of you, whazzat means? I can get a book out if I want! New Directions (I guess). [...]"

Even while focussing on the avant-garde, New Directions managed to escape the obscurity which most presses choosing this specialized field were usually consigned to. Today their distinctive black and white covers are an exception in an age where every means possible is used to catch the browser's eye: four and six colours on the cover; matte finish stock; metallic ink. New Directions has acquired a reputation among both "cognoscenti" and the general public for interesting new writing, and its name is firmly linked with the field of avant-garde literature.

In addition to being a high profile and attractive outlet for many of the Beat writers, New Directions served them through a kind of "second order" effect as well. By proving in a very visible way that alternative publishing could be viable: both culture and commerce in balance, New Directions served as an inspiration to a number of other publishers who followed, small presses that would eventually carve out there own niches, and build up their own coterie of writers which the mainstream press ignored or felt unwilling to publish. Grove Press was one such press.

1959 saw Grove's publication of an unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover. At that time the work was under a Custom's ban which forbade its import into the United States, a ban which had been in effect since the book's first publication in Italy over thirty years earlier. Grove's decision to publish, although a calculated risk, was most likely influenced by City Lights' successful defense of Allen Ginsberg's Howl in 1957, where the court had ruled that Howl had "some redeeming importance," and hence was not obscene (6).

The District Court ruled similarly in the Lady Chatterly case, and the notoriety brought by all the press coverage ensured brisk sales of the book. In fact sales of Lady Chatterly's Lover almost doubled Grove's volume, and made them "a big-time legal client as well as a big-time publisher" (Mayer 1969).

In the years to come, Grove Press seemed to deliberately seek controversy, staking out its territory along the frontiers of public taste. Rosset relished his role in the vanguard of the battle against censorship, and in this respect was willing to go substantially further than that other pillar of the avant-garde publishing community, New Directions.

Since the late 1930s New Directions had held the American rights to Henry Miller's books, first published in Paris and banned in the United States. But New Directions had made no move to publish them. Barney Rosset, however, actively courted Miller, and fought to acquire the rights for Grove. In a letter written to an editor at Hachette, the French publisher who then held the rights, Rosset states that he is "personally anxious to publish the books [Cancer and Capricorn], both because I have always admired them, and because I have started with Lady Chatterly a battle against censorship which I would like to carry on" (Hutchinson 1968).

With the help of Maurice Girodias of the Olympia Press, Rosset eventually won Miller over. He also convinced New Directions to sign the American rights over to Grove, and in 1961 Grove came out with Tropic of Cancer.

Publication was followed by a series of legal battles to defend booksellers accused of selling pornography: a total of sixty separate state and legal prosecutions in all. The costs came close to ruining Grove. But in a sense the greater battle had been won; the publishing climate in the United States had undergone a significant change, one which effected all publishers. According to Jacob Epstein of Random House, "when the history of publishing is written, Barney will have a place in it. He's bright. He takes a lot of risks that look frivolous to many people, but there's a serious radical impulse behind them all. He's altered the climate of publishing to everybody's advantage" (Mayer 1969).

Rosset's willingness to take risks was critical to Grove's relationship with the avant-garde, and made the press receptive to the more daring works of the Beat writers. In a 1985 interview he was asked whether, in publishing somebody like Kerouac, he was deliberately searching out the avant-garde (Oakes 1990):

Yes, I was, I was absolutely conscious of it. That was the reason I was doing it. We were going after people who had basically failed in a commercial sense, because if they hadn't other publishers would have been involved with them. I, and the rest of us, were looking for new talents, new people who really had something to offer. We were very aware of the dangers and the possibilities of people like Ginsberg, Beckett, Kerouac, Robbe-Grillet, Ionesco, Genet. They represented something that was going to be very important in the next generation.

The U.S. publication of Naked Lunch in 1962 began what was to be a lengthy association between Grove Press and William S. Burroughs. Burroughs, along with Henry Miller, were the two authors whose works gave Grove the battles Barney Rosset sought, and which raised Grove head and shoulders above the crowd. In 1964, an article on Grove noted that "the last five years have seen immense changes in the criteria of both legality and respectability applied to writing which handles sex. Grove Press, which swept into the big time on the first waves of the Beat Generation, [has] played an important role [...] in turning the tide against censorship" (Hutchinson 1968).

One of Barney Rosset's most important assets in Grove's riding the crest of the literary avant-garde, was his editor, Donald Allen. Donald Allen had come to New York in 1951 from the West Coast, where he'd attended graduate school at Berkeley during the late forties. At Berkeley he'd gotten to know a number of the writers of the so-called Berkeley Renaissance, attending their poetry readings and meetings.

Barney Rosset met Donald Allen at a night-school publishing course both were attending. When a friendship developed, Rosset asked Allen to become an editor at the fledgling Grove Press, and Allen agreed. One of Donald Allen's important additions while at Grove was Evergreen Review, which he edited for the first six issues. Excited by the work coming from the West Coast, Allen drew upon his Berkeley contacts to put together the second issue of the magazine, featuring the writers of the San Francisco Renaissance. Out of his involvement with Evergreen Review came three important collections for Grove: The New American Poetry: 1945-1960, The Poetics of the New American Poetry, and New American Story, collections which helped lend legitimacy to the work of the Beat writers and their poetics (8).

Ferlinghetti and a partner started City Lights Books in June of 1953 as the City Lights Pocket Book Shop. When the partner sold his interest about a year later, Lawrence Ferlinghetti decided to use the bookstore as a base for the publication avant-garde literature, a project which he'd been considering for some time.

The first book published by the new City Lights Books was a collection of his own poetry: Pictures of the Gone World. It inaugurated the Pocket Poets series which City Lights still publishes: inexpensive, pocket-sized editions of poetry modelled on similar books which Ferlinghetti had seen in Paris while studying at the Sorbonne. The format proved very popular, helping to make poetry available to a larger audience than it normally reached.

The real break for City Lights came with the publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The poem had had its first public reading at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955. Also reading that evening were Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen, with Jack Kerouac passing wine around and shouting encouragement from the edge of the stage. The reading has since passed into legend. Howl received rave reviews from those present, with Ginsberg receiving two publication offers as a result. City Lights' competitor for the manuscript was another Bay area publisher who wanted to publish it in a limited edition of one hundred copies, priced at $30 each. Instead Ginsberg chose City Lights' Pocket Poets format, and the book appeared in 1956.

It sold well in San Francisco, but was hard to get elsewhere until copies, en route from its British printer, were seized by customs. The seizure garnered widespread news coverage, and resulted in increased demand for the book. In order to circumvent customs Ferlinghetti had a new edition printed in the United States, but obscenity charges were then laid against the bookstore for selling obscene literature, and the case went to trial. City Lights was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union, and after a long, much publicized legal battle, the judge eventually ruled that Howl was not obscene.

Ferlinghetti's biographer notes that "besides establishing the 'nonobscene' character of [Howl], the trial ensured its financial success, and as a result, the future success of City Lights Books as a publisher. [...] Ten thousand copies of Howl had been published by the trial's end, [and it was] on its way to becoming one of the best-selling poetry books in American history" (Silesky 1990).

City Lights Books continued to publish many of the Beat Generation writers, including Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Bob Kaufman and later, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Ferlinghetti missed out on a number of chances though, having turned down Naked Lunch, as well as a collection of Kerouac's poems to have been titled San Francisco Blues (9).

Perhaps inspired by Evergreen Review, City Lights experimented with a literary magazine under the name City Lights Journal. It appeared irregularly throughout the sixties, and was transformed briefly into City Lights Anthology in 1974, and into City Lights Review in 1987. Neither format, however, had the impact which Grove's Evergreen Review had had.

City Lights Books suffered from a malady common to many small presses: writers published early in their careers, and who later went on to make names for themselves, often left for greener pastures when an opportunity presented itself.

Allen Ginsberg himself had had a number of lucrative offers from mainstream publishers, but he had proved more resistant to them. Despite the difficulties that came with publication by a small press: minimal promotion and limited distribution, he remained loyal to City Lights Books, where his relationship was one based on friendship and shared values. The temptation was strong however. At the height of his fame in the mid-sixties, he was offered a ten-thousand-dollar advance for a hardcover edition of his collected poems. Searching for a compromise, he approached Lawrence Ferlinghetti suggesting a copublishing arrangement, but Ferlinghetti talked him out of it (Miles 1989):

He could command enormous sums for poetry readings, and with proper distribution, he would most certainly have been America's best-selling poet. With a good literary agent and a New York publisher, he could have sold at least four times as many books. In 1970, he was offered a $100,000 advance by a New York publisher, but it would have meant leaving City Lights altogether, and he turned it down.

We had a very good arrangement. If he [Ferlinghetti] needed more money one year I would give him a larger percentage. We didn't even have a contract for Howl until the very end. It turned out nobody could even find a contract. We had a friendship arrangement, and it worked for practically thirty years.

With the Olympia Press, Girodias adopted both his father's interest in the avant-garde writers, and a list which had a strong emphasis on sexuality. The two interests were linked, and the connection is examined briefly in Appendix B of this paper. For the Obelisk Press in the thirties, the publishing climate in Britain was far too conservative to have permitted publication of works such as Henry Miller's; this was the primary reason for its being located in Paris.

By the 1950s little had changed. Henry Miller's works were still banned in Britain and the United States, and Paris was still a haven for the publication of controversial works in English. One reason for this was France's traditionally liberal attitude towards such matters; another reason was that English language publishing was of little interest to the French authorities.

Olympia deliberately targeted the small but steady market for books which had been (or would be) banned in Britain and America. He played upon the discrepancy between the two cultures, in a sense laying siege to the more puritanical English speaking world, much as America had been besieged by bootleggers during prohibition. Many of the works published under Olympia's Traveller's Companion imprint had little literary merit, the plots being made up by Girodias himself, and then later expanded by one of his stable of ghost writers from the Paris expatriate community (Girodias 1965):

I usually printed five thousand copies of each book, and paid a flat fee for the manuscript which, although modest, formed the substance of many an expatriate budget. My publishing technique was simple in the extreme, at least in the first years: when I had completely run out of money I wrote blurbs for imaginary books, invented sonorous titles and funny pen names [...] and then printed a list which was sent out to our clientele of book-lovers, tempting them with such titles as White Thighs, The Chariot of Flesh, The Sexual Life of Robinson Crusoe, With Open Mouth, etc. They immediately responded with orders and money, thanks to which we were able to eat, drink, write, and print. I could again advance money to my authors, and they hastened to turn in manuscripts which more or less fitted the descriptions.

Olympia Press's association with Grove had begun with Olympia's publication of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, when Grove became interested in acquiring the American rights. The exchange of foreign rights was, in fact, the primary bond linking the two presses. Over the years Grove acquired the rights to a number of Olympia's books, including works by Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Henry Miller. As Girodias recounts it, he was instrumental in Grove's acquisition of the American rights for Miller's Tropic of Cancer, saying that he "worked to get [Rosset] the rights to Tropic of Cancer for over two years before Henry Miller would sign a contract with Grove. [...] Barney started his firm out of this" (Gontarski 1990).

The relationship between the two firms was not always smooth. While Grove was in the midst of defending the Tropic of Cancer obscenity lawsuit, Maurice Girodias was pleading with them to publish an American edition of Naked Lunch, which Grove owned the rights to, and which was also at the centre of a censorship storm. American sales would have meant some much-needed income for Olympia Press, but Grove sat on the book, preferring to fight one legal battle at a time.

Although Olympia Press did not completely escape the attention of the French courts, it had been treated rather lightly (Morgan 1988):

All Olympia Press books were automatically banned, but fortunately there was a bureaucratic gap of about six months between the publication of a new Olympia title and its banning as obscene, and it was within this gap that Girodias managed to sell most of his books.

The table of contents of The Olympia Reader shows that the Olympia Press had published more than just "dirty books" during its years of operation: Samuel Beckett's Watt; J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man; Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita; as well as several works by William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso's only novel: The American Express. The Olympia Press had served as an important outlet for certain writers of the avant-garde, those whose works would have remained unpublished in the conservative social climate in the United States and Britain during the fifties.

Unspeakable Visions: The Beat Generation and The Bohemian Dialectic. © August, 1991 Michael Hayward